Because that was what good leaders did.
Because that was what Jack Harkness did.
He was walking along St Mary Street, Cardiff’s old main street, before its famous shops had been usurped by the paved Queen Street during the 1970s. St Mary Street was now more famous for its clubs and bars and the network of alleys and arcades that branched off it.
To avoid a group of drunken youngsters, Jack took a sharp left into the tawdriness that was Wood Street. However beautiful Cardiff was – and he really did love his adopted city – this was the one blot on the landscape, a horrible, foreboding area of cheap shops, the grotty bus station and the main entrance to the Victorian facade of Cardiff’s central railway station. For visitors to Cardiff, it wasn’t an attractive greeting, and Jack had often wondered if he could fabricate some reason for Torchwood to blow it up so the council would have to rebuild it.
One to ask Idris Hopper one day, perhaps?
He was in Park Street now, adjoining the new Millennium Stadium that had swallowed up the old Cardiff Arms Park pitch, creating one huge super-venue, with its riverside views, cinema and sports shops.
One of his favourite parts of Cardiff, the street played host to the massive Ty Stadiwm tower, with its horizontal BT dish and mast on the very top.
As modern buildings went, in a city that juxtaposed the old and the new with pleasurable ease, Stadium House was one of Jack’s favourites, mainly because – although it was a ‘classic’ 1970s structure – it had been beautifully refurbished (including the addition of the forty-two-foot mast) in the early part of the twenty-first century.
He entered the lobby, winking at Gerry, the security guard, and throwing some Swiss chocolate over to him. Each guard at each building had a weakness for something and Jack was friendly with them all. Chocolate was always the most popular bribe.
He took the service elevator and, moments later, he was nearly 255 feet above sea level, standing beside the ‘dish’ and looking down into the Millennium Stadium below. Thousands of empty seats surrounding a lush green pitch. If he closed his eyes, Jack could imagine the roar of the Saturday afternoon crowd, smell the people, breathe in the beer, sweat and passion of the fans and players alike.
He looked up at the brightly lit antenna, thrusting upwards from the centre of the dish, illuminated to make it visible from miles away, casting numerous shadows of Jack across the rooftop.
The light. Something about the light…
Was it moving, was the light actual coalescing into something?
‘Jack?’
‘Greg?’
The shape of Greg’s face, just an impression, seemed to swim in and out of existence, formed by the severe light from around the dish.
‘Not long now, Jack, and it’ll be over. The eternal battle for justice, for dominion. It’s in the diary, Jack, it’s all in the diary.’
And then, just for a few seconds, the lights went out. All over the city.
And the only illumination was provided by a crimson ribbon of Rift energy, stretching from the mast above him right across the city, and down to Cardiff Bay, where he could see it hovering just above where he knew the water tower sculpture was situated.
Within the Rift were thousands of dancing lights, and black blobs. Jack had witnessed Rift energy more times than anyone else on Earth, but he’d never seen so many pinpricks of light and dark inside it. Revenge for the Future? Jack began to understand.
Then the Rift energy was gone, and Cardiff came back to life.
‘You can’t do it, Owen! For God’s sake, we’ve been here before. Light and Dark, two polar opposites.Try to stop one, you upset the balance of the Universe.’
Owen Harper just sighed at Jack, then reached out with his good hand and tapped the button on the control systems in the Boardroom. An image on the screen popped into life. It showed the Rift Manipulator as a cut-away diagram.
‘Jack, listen to me. And if not me, listen to Gwen. Look at what we’ve achieved with the Rift. We can control it now, we could use it as a sort of gateway, pop in and out of places, get that alien tech we need to stop the bad guys.’
Jack looked at the others. ‘Gwen?’
‘I don’t know, I can see the advantages, but I’m not convinced.’
‘Tosh?’
‘Jack, I have to say, I’m with Owen on this.’
‘Only because you two discovered the light creatures. You might be under their spell for all we know.’ Jack flicked the image off. ‘I don’t like it.’
‘No, Jack, listen to us. There are things out there that could do marvellous things for this planet. We could, literally, change the world.’
‘The mantra of the Torchwood Institute in London,’ snarled Jack. ‘Look where it got them.’
‘They were stupid,’ said Owen. ‘They didn’t have the foresight we have. Hell, they didn’t have you as their moral compass. But we have the chance here to do something really good. Tosh is right. The Rift could be our way to solving this planet’s problems. Now we can control it.’
‘Ianto?’
‘I’m with Jack,’ he said.
‘Course you are,’ said Owen. ‘I mean, heaven forbid you might have an opinion of your own once in a while.’
‘I do have opinions of my own. I just don’t bother telling you what they are because you wouldn’t like them.’
Gwen stood up. ‘I’m sorry, but this question has been… consuming us this past couple of weeks. God knows what we’re missing.’
Owen stabbed at the button again. ‘Weevil sightings: none. Alien incursions: none. Dangerous bombs ready to blow Cardiff up: none. Sightings of Bilis Manger: none.’
‘OK, Owen, you made your point.’ Gwen switched the screen off again. ‘But I’m still not letting this conversation continue.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I have something to tell you. Something I hope won’t result in me being shoved into a mortuary slab and all my personal belongings being stored in that garage for eternity.’
Jack frowned. ‘You want to leave Torchwood?’
‘You’re being controlled by the Resurrection Boot and draining your life energy into Ianto?’That was Owen.
‘You’re proposing Andy Davidson, of Cardiff’s finest, as a member of Torchwood?’ asked Toshiko.
‘She and Rhys are having a baby.’ Ianto walked over and gave Gwen a hug.
‘She told you?’ said Jack, after a moment’s pause.
‘No,’ said Ianto. ‘I just keep my eyes open and my mouth closed.’ He looked at Owen. ‘You should try it.’
Gwen squeezed Ianto’s hand. ‘Thirteen weeks.’
Jack gave her a kiss, so did Toshiko.
Owen sat there, a smile on his face that he didn’t feel.
And looked at Toshiko.
And instinctively thought of the box at his flat, in the empty, deactivated fridge that no one ever opened.
A box with a ring in it.
He sighed. He could never have kids. Not in his condition. And Toshiko – look at her face.The idea of a baby was thrilling her. How could he ask her to marry him? What was he thinking?
‘Good one, Gwen,’ he said. ‘And tell Rhys that, too. I need to check on some specimens.’
He touched her hand as he walked out, and wondered if she flinched at his touch or whether, after all this time, it was still something he saw people do in his imagination.
He walked through the corridors and up towards the Hub.
A minute later, he stood looking at the base of the water tower. All it needed was some kind of energy boost,
